Debating News: CAS Round 1
YEAR 7 DEBATING REPORT
In the first debate of the CAS debating season, we had great expectations to perform very well after a very successful ISDA season. We came to Knox confident that we were going to come out victorious. We received the topic ‘That we should ban school leaders from wearing badges and other signs of their leadership position’ and Trinity was assigned the affirmative case. We went to our prep rooms and immediately started prepping. We knew that we would have a tough debate against a tough opponent. We slowly worked through our coaches’ strategy, which I will not put in this report, so it won’t leak to our opponents. Slowly and steadily, we filled it out and we were confident that we would have a great chance against our opponents.
The debate finally started. We came out on the attack firstly about the problem in the status quo of how most people became a leader for the badge instead of serving their fellow peers like they were supposed to; we also told the adjudicator how it also created a sense of overconfidence. Then we identified exactly how our model will be solving this issue. At the second speaker we were then able to further prove how we would be encouraging more people who weren’t currently in the leadership positions to take up leadership roles.
Knox, though, also gave very strong responses especially at second response and closing. The debate concluded with negative’s final speaker giving a very strong analysis of how the debate went. We then waited eagerly for the results of the debate to come out; we very gratefully noted it down and made a mental note to focus on that in our next debates. The adjudicator stepped through the debate thoroughly, but at the end we lost. It was devastating considering that we had just won the ISDA finals. However, it was also a good reminder to us that we needed to remain constantly vigilant about our position,and that we were not invulnerable to human flaws such as overconfidence. We thanked Knox for a wonderful debate, and we also apologise for any disappointment caused to our coaches, and peers.
R. Qin (7 Yo)
